Pose a question about listening and public speaking, or bring up a discussion point from the reading. For example, you may discuss what you think is the biggest barrier to good listening in society today or you may provide advice on what you've done to become a better listener, or you may decide to tell a story (funny or serious!) about a time when you didn't listen and what the consequences were. Be creative and put some thought into it!

Listening is an art. When it comes to listening, there’s no formal training for this. But we often forget that listening is as important as speaking. Some of the biggest barriers to good listening are:

• Lack of interest: People like talking, everyone wants someone to hear them out and which is why when others starts talking we feel uninterested mainly because we wait for our turn to speak.

• Distractions: Distraction is another hurdle to effective listening. Distraction could be in any form, be it the surrounding noise or a lot many people talking at the same time or simply undisturbed mind. All these factors contribute to being least interested.

• Tedious or repetitive topic: It often happens that the speaker initiates a conversation which is already being told numerous times or the topic is simply uninteresting. And which is why the listener lose interest.

Apart from these, there are many other minor barriers to listening. It is important that we develop skills to listen to what a person really has to say, rather than simply being least interested.